Watchtower plans Montgomery site for prefab

Tuesday

May 13, 2014 at 2:00 AM

TOWN OF MONTGOMERY — The Watchtower Tract and Bible Society plans to use a warehouse on Bracken Road to assemble prefabricated bathrooms for its world headquarters under construction in the Town of Warwick.

James Walsh

TOWN OF MONTGOMERY — The Watchtower Tract and Bible Society plans to use a warehouse on Bracken Road to assemble prefabricated bathrooms for its world headquarters under construction in the Town of Warwick.

The headquarters project includes housing for 1,000 adults — no children will live there — and buildings for offices and support services. Construction on that project, located off Long Meadow Road in Warwick, began last year and is scheduled for completion in late 2016.

The Jehovah's Witnesses will build bathrooms at the Montgomery warehouse, located at 124 Bracken Road, for one to two years, Watchtower's Associate General Counsel Richard Moake said in a March 6 letter to Montgomery Building Inspector Walter Schmidt.

"Once this assembly activity is complete, the entire building will be used for warehousing and accessory office space only," Moake wrote.

Watchtower bought the 209,000-square-foot building for $8.8 million in February, according to public records. It was formerly used by C&S Wholesale Grocers.

The Jehovah's Witnesses need the town's permission for the prefabrication work in the building, said Enrique Ford, a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses construction project committee.

Assembly work is already allowed in the zone where the warehouse is located, he said.

The Planning Board will discuss the issue during a meeting at 7:30 p.m. May 27.

The Jehovah's Witnesses are leaving Brooklyn, where they were based since 1909 after moving from Pittsburgh. The Brooklyn buildings grew inefficient over the years, and the move to Warwick will bring the headquarters closer to a Watchtower farm and printing plant in Shawangunk.

Watchtower bought a Town of Newburgh hotel, the former Hampton Inn, in March, and the 48-unit Suffern Commons apartment complex last year to house volunteers working on the headquarters. The volunteers belong to regional building committees organized in all 50 states. They convene when needed to build local places of worship, spokesman Richard Devine has said.